Tainted Love
by Ysellyra Tunnelly
Summary: I reached over and kissed him gently, the drop of potion flowing down my throat.


**Tainted Love**

_My only love sprung from my only hate…_

This feeling is killing me slowly, softly, eating away at me from the inside.

It's taking its time, sinking into every pore maliciously, torturously slowly. It's doing this purposefully, smirking at me evilly while it destroys me.

I was stupid at first. I thought it would go away, become dormant, wait until some other time.

After a while I realised this wasn't going to happen. So I got used to it; ignored it. I figured it was the best way to deal with it. But it got stronger the more I pushed it aside.

I was in ignorance; purposeful ignorance, but ignorance all the same. I had to ignore it- it was the hardest thing I had ever gone through. If I thought about it, it'd eat me up.

Well, I _thought_ it was the hardest thing I had ever gone through. But that was nothing to when he knew. He _knew_. He knew about me, what I thought of him, how I _felt_ about him.

But still, this wasn't the worst. What was worst was when he returned those feelings.

At first I was ecstatic. The one person I had dreamed about for months, years; the boy who made my life worth living loved me back.

We were together in secret: nights spent in the room of requirement where they could talk for hours, not noticing the time slipping by; secret gifts delivered by owl, never letting other people see the sender; even the odd meeting in a broom cupboard between classes.

But it wasn't enough- I wanted to be able to see him in public, not have to act like I hated him in front of my classmates. No, not want. Need.

I _had _to see him more, had to hold him, be able to embrace him where people could see, not shy away from the public eye. But that seemed impossible.

We would be shunned, abused, ruined. My family name alone would be destroyed by gossip. His would be tainted. My father would kill me, probably him as well.

But we had to do it. It had to go public. It was dieing to do so, bugging me twenty-four hours a day.

So we agreed- Monday we'd show everyone our true feelings.

We expected a bit of a row- okay, more than that. People wouldn't agree with it, but they'd get over it, right?

Wrong.

It didn't go away, it didn't die down, they didn't get over it. It hurt, to say the least. The mocked us, looked down their noses at us, spat on us.

It hurt too much. Our meetings became a horror, constantly talking about our peers. We'd spend nights crying into each others shoulders, trying to work out how to get it to work. But there was only one option.

But we wouldn't resort to that. Not yet.

Like I said, it hurt. And not just for me. It hurt to see him, my man, _my _Harry getting teased. Former golden boy is now going out with… well, someone he shouldn't be.

It hurt to see him be ignored, talked at behind his back, whispers of his name everywhere.

He tried to be strong, and I loved him for that. The way he stood up for me, even when his best friends were against us. The number of fights he got in because of our relationship, the way he defended me with no thought to himself or others- but most importantly the way he comforted me each night.

We'd lie in his or my bed, holding each other. I'd hate myself for causing him this pain, even more for not being able to take it away.

I hated it. I hated them. I hated everyone.

They pissed me off. No, that wasn't enough. The anger I felt for them had no limits, no way of describing it. No name.

That was one of the hardest things about it- I couldn't diagnose the problem and

treat it, or deal with it.

I couldn't say 'I've got depression' because it was so much more. Not 'I'm dying' because on the outside I was healthy. I couldn't say 'I'm in love' because that would have been much too easy. This was so much more than love. Love wasn't meant to hurt this much, was it?

It got too hard. For me. For him. For every fucking one else.

We couldn't take it any more, and neither could they.

So we did it. The one thing we said we wouldn't do.

We spent hours in the library finding the potion. When we came up empty handed, we snuck into the restricted section at night under the invisibility cloak.

I remember it like it was just last week. Oh, that's right. It was.

'Harry?' I asked, pressing a little closer to him than needed.

'Hmmm?' he asked, busy searching for the book on the dusty shelves.

'What if someone finds us?' I asked, shifting nervously, checking to make sure the cloak covered every inch of us.

'Jeez, you're even more nervous than Ron used to be!' he laughed quietly.

'Ron used to go under the cloak with you?' I asked suddenly.

'What, getting jealous?' he teased, but he looked at my face and saw that I really was.

'You're the only one for me.' He said, holding my hand as he continued his search for the book. 'Besides- I don't swing that way.'

'What, to the lower side of society of to boys.' I asked.

He rolled his eyes. 'You figure it out.'

I grinned.

We found the book a few minutes later, and the next day I started to brew it. We worked on it every spare minute we had- it took two months to brew.

He'd prepare the ingredients (as much as I loved him, he was hopeless at the actual brewing of potions, but preparing them he could manage), grinding the Egyptian beetles to a fine powder, measuring out dragons blood, chopping up caterpillars. His brow furrowed in concentration, biting his lip with frustration at any minor mistake- he looked so beautiful when he worked. His robes would be pushed up to his elbows, revealing delicately muscled forearms, or even better, when he pulled them of entirely so that he was just in jeans and a t-shirt. But he didn't know how these little things drove me mad.

Finally the day came- the potion was ready. We made preparations.

We'd go down to the gardens that evening and take it together.

Bitter relief rushed through my body, numbing the pain but being horribly present the entire day. I went through classes in a haze, thinking about that night.

That evening we walked down to the gardens holding hands, the vial of potion in my robe pocket.

It was funny- two months working on the thing, and all we needed was two drops.

I almost laughed at the absurdity of it all.

We sat down in the middle of the lawn, easily visible to anyone that cared to pass, but it was the middle of the night so the grounds were empty.

I pulled the vial from my pocket and handed it to him.

He smiled at me and I saw he had tears in his eyes.

'Don't cry,' I whispered, wiping the tears from his eyes with my thumbs. 'We'll be together, in peace. Finally.' He smiled at me and I smiled back.

He took a deep breath and nodded, pulling the cap off the vial, bringing it to his lips. He held my hand and, with one last look at me, downed the potion.

He dropped the vial and fell back to the ground, a tiny drop of potion still glistening on his lips.

I reached over and kissed him gently, the drop of potion flowing down my throat.

I felt blackness over take me and let my eyes close, holding my love, my beautiful, my own, close.

Hermione Granger woke about six o'clock in the morning, blearily opening her eyes and sighing. Knowing she wouldn't be able to get back to sleep, she got up and moved to the window to get a drink. She poured her glass and stood, looking out the window, sipping at the water. She looked across the grounds and noticed something odd.

Two figures were slumped on the grass. One with brown hair and the other with-

'SHIT!' she yelled, running out the door and down the stairs.

The glass of water lay spilt and forgotten on the floor, slowly seeping into the plush carpet.

…_too early seen unknown…_

'Dumbledore, what do we do?' asked Minerva McGonagall frantically, trying to hold back students from the two students that lay on the ground before them.

'Take the students back to their common rooms.' He sighed.

'Dumbledore… Why? I knew things were bad, but really…?' she said sadly.

'No one would ever accept them. And they knew that.' He said softly. 'Now, I think we should leave them for a while. I will come down later to take them away. We leave them in peace- that is, after all, why they did this. For peace.'

Minerva nodded, and within a few minutes everyone was back in class, save for Albus Dumbledore. He gazed at them, a sad smile playing across his features as he took in the scene that lay before them.

'Be in peace now, boys.' He said, before walking back to the castle, leaving Harry Potter, The Boy Who Lived and Draco Malfoy, his former nemesis, laying entwined on the dew covered grass, arms entwined together. Had anyone looked closely, they would have seen cold tears on each of their cheeks, frozen from the bitter nighttime chill.

…_and known too late._


End file.
